“Backup.” His gaze cuts to his jacket folded on his arm, as if embarrassed by the attention. “Finally getting the other pair fixed.”
William’s smiling. “Pulchritudinous.”
Lionel cocks his head, bewildered. “Bless you?”
“You look resplendent,” William amends.
Then, perhaps for the first time all week, Sumner’s eyes meet mine. A longing nostalgia threatens to bring up old feelings. I stuff it down, refusing to entertain it.
Hedoeslook good, not to say he didn’t before. More refined.His ego is large enough without me inflating it, so I flick my eyes down to the issue at hand.
“We need more information before we can finish,” I offer curtly.
He pads across the room to join us, close enough for me to track clean shampoo and undertones of spicy-honeyed warmth. Then his arms fold across his chest. “The encasing should be an inch thicker.”
My eyes snap to his. “What?”
“I mean”—there’s a slight twinge of annoyance in his cadence—“these measurements look off.”
That can’t be true.
Lionel’s already pulled up next to his laptop, so I bend over my father’s journal. When I cross-reference my dad’s calculations with the numbers published in the academic article, I see the mistake. My dad moved a decimal when estimating what we’d need for the foundation, and Sumner was working off his ideas. Lionel presses his lips together as he realizes this too. A flush of aggravated embarrassment warms my skin.
It’s my fault.
The most irritating part of all? Sumner’s dying for me to admit he’s right. He warned me about getting ahead of myself and I hadn’t listened, wasting materials and time. We’ve been in over our heads from the beginning. The odds of succeeding aren’t great. If others hadn’t been able to lay the groundwork, what chance do we have?
“Maybe we move to our backup plan,” I suggest.
“Notthis,” Sumner groans, collapsing into an empty chair.
Lionel moves his hands away from the keyboard. “There’s a backup plan?”
“Well—sort of.” My gaze snags on William’s. “We both made similar wishes that night. I think they tethered together somehow to bring him here, so maybe that’s the key to reversing this.”
The radiator clicks over our silence. Doubt creeps across Lionel’s face. Sumner releases a long, intentional sigh. William, at the very least, gives me an encouraging nod.
“Have you…tried?” Lionel says uncertainly.
“No,” I admit. “But I think it’s possible.”
Lionel closes his laptop, smoothing his hands over the surface. He won’t make eye contact. Neither will Sumner, who begins to tug at the back of his hair, quickly realizing that the length he’s seeking isn’t there. He palms his neck instead.
I can’t take it anymore.“What?”
“I have so many logical theories capable of disproving this,” Sumner finally says, “but I won’t waste my breath.”
“So don’t.” The testiness in my voice is clear. “Wishing him back is our answer.”
It comes out colder than I intend, and he instantly shuts down. Remorse snakes through me.
“Fine,” he says. “Guess you should spend your free time beefing up your GPA anyway, if you think you can manage.”
I hoped he hadn’t noticed, but of course he did. While hisranking’s remained unwavering at twenty, mine has fallen. Twenty-two. It hasn’t been that low since sophomore year. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal, even though disappointment sank like a stone in my gut after I’d checked the portal. Last year I’d managed to secure spot twenty for a full semester. And now—
My eyes flit to William. I’ve been preoccupied.
“I can manage just fine.”
